Although planktonic protozoans are likely to interact with dispersed crude oil after a spill, protozoan-mediated processes affecting crude oil pollution in the sea are still not well known. Here, we present the first evidence of ingestion and defecation of physically or chemically dispersed crude oil droplets (1-86 μm in diameter) by heterotrophic dinoflagellates, major components of marine pla...

Dinoflagellate blooms in coastal upwelling systems are restricted to times and places with reduced exchange and mixing. The Rías Baixas of Galicia are four bays in the NW Iberian upwelling with these characteristics where harmful algal blooms (HABs) of dinoflagellates are common. These blooms are especially recurrent at the end of the upwelling season, when autumn downwelling amplifies accumula...

Dinoflagellates are unicellular algae that are ubiquitously abundant in aquatic environments. Species of the genus Symbiodinium form symbiotic relationships with reef-building corals and other marine invertebrates. Despite their ecologic importance, little is known about the genetics of dinoflagellates in general and Symbiodinium in particular. Here, we used 454 sequencing to generate transcrip...

Alveolates are a diverse group of protists that includes three major lineages: ciliates, apicomplexa, and dinoflagellates. Among these three, it is thought that the apicomplexa and dinoflagellates are more closely related to one another than to ciliates. However, this conclusion is based almost entirely on results from ribosomal RNA phylogeny because very few morphological characters address th...

The mitochondrial genome and the expression of the genes within it have evolved to be highly unusual in several lineages. Within alveolates, apicomplexans and dinoflagellates share the most reduced mitochondrial gene content on record, but differ from one another in organisation and function. To clarify how these characteristics originated, we examined mitochondrial genome form and expression i...

Spliced leader (SL) trans-splicing is a common mRNA processing mechanism in dinoflagellates, in which a 22-nt sequence is transferred from the 5'-end of a small noncoding RNA, the SL RNA, to the 5'-end of mRNA molecules. Although the SL RNA gene was shown initially to be organized as tandem repeats with transcripts of 50-60 nt, shorter than most of their counterparts in other organisms, other g...

The most widely distributed dinoflagellate plastid contains chlorophyll c(2) and peridinin as the major carotenoid. A second plastid type, found in taxa such as Karlodinium micrum and Karenia spp., contains chlorophylls c(1) + c(2) and 19'-hexanoyloxy-fucoxanthin and/or 19'-butanoyloxy-fucoxanthin but lacks peridinin. Because the presence of chlorophylls c(1) + c(2) and fucoxanthin is typical o...

Dinoflagellates make up a diverse array of fatty acids and polyketides. A necessary precursor for their synthesis is malonyl-CoA formed by carboxylating acetyl CoA using the enzyme acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC). To date, information on dinoflagellate ACC is limited. Through transcriptome analysis in Amphidinium carterae, we found three full-length homomeric type ACC sequences; no heteromeric typ...

Abstract Dinoflagellates encompass highly abundant and diverse toxin-producing species among marine phytoplankton. Previous works suggested that some bacterial taxa may affect toxins production in dinoflagellates, however, little is known about impact of toxic dinoflagellates on their co-existing flora. Here we characterized the communities associated with 22 clonal cultures using DNA metabarco...